


The Face Stealer

by Wandering_Swain



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Meta, Spirit World, implied sexual situation, referencing characters that don't appear, talking to one's self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Swain/pseuds/Wandering_Swain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're the same person, so it should be easier for Aang to talk to her than anyone else in or outside the Spirit World.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Face Stealer

And she is sitting in front of, in back of, below a sky as blue as cornflowers, like blood still in a vein, like her hard eyes.

Aang says, "It will be fine, I promise. I thought it would be impossible. I hated the idea of it all so much, I decided I wouldn't do it."

She is not listening to him.

"But I embraced it.  You can, too!" he says.

She is not listening

"I think you'll do a good job."

She is not

"Honest." He takes a deep breath. "I believe in you."

She is

"I'm here."

She

She does not acknowledge he's there.

Of course he's there. He's her, in a way, a tall, handsome girl with corded muscles beneath her skin, so it should be easier to talk to her than anyone else in or outside the Spirit World.

"What's your name?" he says, because that's what you say in a conversation.

The blue sky filters through her because she doesn't exist yet, not outside of him, not in his world. She looks up with her blood-in-the-vein eyes and says, "Ko."

And he snaps out of his meditation because he doesn't want his face stolen.

***

"You've been going to the Spirit World a lot."

"Not really."

"What? Of course you have!" Katara stretches, threatening to get out of bed. "I've seen you meditating."

"Sort of. Kind of." Aang wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her back under the covers. "I'm trying to see the future." He nuzzles the back of her neck.

She flips over. "Really?!  You can do that?"

"I--well, no, but, you know. Maybe I can." He clears his throat. "If I try." He doesn't believe himself, even as he says it. Something happens when he's meditating, though.

"What are you trying to see?"

"The next Avatar," he tells her.

She laughs, calls him impatient, kisses him. Kisses him harder, as if he's planning on going somewhere and she needs to keep him still.

He cards his fingers through her hair and they are together, wrapped in warmth. The cottage they're inside smells like dead fish because it's right by the sea and smoke because it's by the eastern gates of the Fire Nation that are currently being re-built.

It isn't the best place, but she doesn't let go as she opens her mouth beneath his. They're facing each other, so their chests are aligned. He can feel the softness of her breasts now heaving against him, their fullness and how they pull away when she inhales. His head light, he grabs for them (not hard; gently) so they won't leave.

She gasps and says something into his mouth but he doesn't hear what it is, he's too busy tilting her head back and kissing her neck. Maybe she says, "I love you"; it's what he wants to say.

They forget to go out that day and, more importantly, forget the smell of the cottage.

***

"I don't know what you are," he tells the girl beneath the sky, who is the sky, who's the color of the sky, "but you can't have my face."

She stands up. She's looking at him, now.

"I. I know you have to have it, eventually, but not yet."

She is coming towards him, and Spirits, she is tall.

"I just wanted to see who you were," he says quietly.

He sees her as the sky because even though this incarnation will be from the Water Tribe, she will be closer to the sky than he is, at least when they both stand on the ground. She walks toward him through yellow not-grass (the idea of grass; soft as Appa's fur, silky as Momo's tail, golden yellow as parchment).

She is a person not yet made. Her face smears across the sky like a thumbprint on a glass lens.

"How--how old are y-you?" he asks. If this is a nonsense question if he's talking to a not-yet person, then how can he expect her to respond? He has to carry on like this is a real conversation, though. The secret to making a real person is, first and foremost, treating her like one.

"Howhow old are yuhyou?" she echoes. It's not mocking, but as if she's learning how to speak.

"I'm seventeen," he says.

"I'm seventeen," she says.

"I'm the Avatar."

"I'm the Avatar."

"We're the Avatar."

She nods. "I was born the Avatar."

"Will be born the Avatar," he corrects her.

"Was born the Avatar," she corrects him. She leans forward conspiratorially. "What was it like, Avatar Aang?"

"It--it isn't a 'was,' it's an 'is.'" He's still the Avatar. Right now, he is drifting between meditation and real sleep, lying next to a girl he loves. Even as he stands in a not-world with yellow grass licking his heels and blue, shifting sky, he feels her warm back against his chest. He smells Katara's hair, sweet and good. "It's the best thing."

"It's not the best thing." The girl's face is becoming real. Skin as dark as Katara's but with a broader face; harder and maybe a little less kind. Stronger, though, and well-meaning. Earnest. She smiles. "I train so hard. I'm good at being the Avatar."

"The best."

"The very best!" She is full girl now and throws her arms up. She is touching a sky as solid as Aang currently isn't. "But I can be better, right?"

He looks at his hands. They are yellowed parchment, faded in the sun. He can see through them. "Get better," he repeats.

"I will." She crosses her arms. Sighs. "I'm not good at spirit stuff. The masters are all like, 'You got to think, okay?' And I don't know how to do that."

"Do that." He is no longer himself; he is her, and this body is the boy. The boy looks hard at Ko. Coral. Kor-ah.

"I'm trying," she tells him.

"It will be fine," says the boy. "I promise."

She knows that, to her, in this form, he isn't a person, but a person-who-once-was.

He tries to hug her and can't. He settles for resting his forehead against hers, a head Korra can see right through into the sky beyond. He's shorter, closer to the ground than she is, but she leans her head against his, too, and closes her eyes.

Korra feels warm and the air smells like smoke and fish.

***

Beneath the pelts of narwolf fur and goat dog fleece, Korra is woken up by the smell of fish frying over the fire pit. In the oil, they hiss and pop.

"Has the fever broken, yet?"

Korra tries to respond and squirm out of the cocoon of blankets and coats, but ends up coughing instead. It rips her throat in half and sounds like paper being torn apart.

"You have to rest, dear."

"I had a not-dream."

"A nightmare?"

"No, no, um." Korra lays back down. "A dream that wasn't a dream."

"Memories?"

Korra thinks about this. She can't remember. She can't even remember what she's saying now. "They weren't mine."

Katara's laugh is warm, deep with age. She's Korra's favorite teacher, the kindest of the elders. "If they're memories, they belonged to someone."

Korra drifts off but agrees yes, they did.

**Author's Note:**

> Korra has been filling my head for months, now, since before the release of the teaser trailer. Before the announcement with the now famous still of her back as she stands on a bridge. I learned about the new show when Viacom confirmed its purchase of the name "Legend of Korra" on Twitter a while ago. Korra has been spilling over into my daydreams ever since, mysterious, promising, and enormous.
> 
> This is a sliver of a story, but I wrote it because I needed somewhere to put an ocean.


End file.
